potato smash

Friday night. Nothing much in the house. Can’t be bothered going shopping. Just want to curl up with some comfort food and a comfort book.
mashed potato can be a meal right?? right??

yeh.. .

particularly with the amount of stuff that i can put in.
firstly i never peel my potatos. never have, i’m waay too lazy for that, and plus you get extra vitamins (this claim hasn’t been scientifically verified, i’m also waay to lazy for that and it makes me feel better about being lazy).
secondly i look through my fridge / freezer / cupboards and see what i have.
this time i happened to have
– bacon (though i pretty much always have bacon on hand – if not frozen)
– cheese (pre-grated, i’m from the nigella school of cooking. If it makes your life easier then why not)
– spinach (another one of life’s staples)
– onion (everything tastes better with onion)
– capsicum (i love everything about capsicum)
– kidney beans (because i had them in the cupboard)
– i always have some fridge squeezy herbs for such occasions, usually parsley and coriander
– and of course garlic, milk, butter, salt, and pepper. They help the smashing part.

It’s not a glamorous potato mash – but it’s effective.
And it can all be done in the one pan (score! less washing up)

So you fry the onion, bacon, and capsicum until it looks good.
If you chop it all the same size it cooks at the same time.
Take that out of the saucepan – fill it with cold water, splosh the potatoes in (chopping them helps them cook quicker), and wait for them to be cooked enough so that if you put a fork in the biggest bit it’s a bit squishy.
That’s the bit that i have the most trouble with – i always seem to undercook my potatos which makes them harder to mash.

Once the potatos are squishy enough, drain them and return them to the pan.
Add the ingredients that need to melt first, butter, milk, cheese, kidney beans (they don’t need to melt, but heating them up slightly tastes better, they also should be drained if you don’t like kidney bean juice), then start mashing.
Add the herbs, garlic, salt, and pepper as you’re mashing.

Once it’s all looking well mashed, add the onion, capsicum, and bacon that you’ve already fried and mix that through.
The last step should be the spinach – the heat of the potatos usually wilts it just enough.

And there you have it.
a meal of mashed potato.
obviously other things go well with that mix.
Fried mushrooms work well, so does fried tomato.
Different cheeses work too.
I sometimes use cream cheese to mash with instead of butter. Tzatsiki also works well depending on how much you’ve already got in there.

but the end result is, you’ve used up some leftovers and you have that comforting potato mash, but with less potatos and more healthy stuff than just plain old potato mash.
So comfort potato smash and a good book (re-reading Persuasion by Jane Austen)
Sounds like a good friday night to me.